Former US President Richard Nixon told a US grand jury "I practically blew my stack" when he learned of the long gap on a White House tape sought in the Watergate scandal investigation, according to transcripts released on Thursday.

In one of the biggest political scandals in US history, much has been made of the 18 1/2-minute gap on tapes of Nixon's White House conversations. The key question -- did it include incriminating information about the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters by his campaign operatives?

Nixon spent hours before the grand jury on June 23 and 24, 1975, almost a year after he resigned due to the involvement of his aides and campaign in the attempt to bug his political opponents' offices at the Watergate complex and the subsequent cover-up.

In office from 1969 to 1974, Nixon stepped down in the face of almost certain impeachment over a scandal that damaged national trust in the White House and government.

Nixon, who died on April 22, 1994, was pardoned a month after he left the White House by his successor, President Gerald Ford. He was interviewed by the Watergate Special Prosecution Force before two grand jury members in California.

....

"Rose had thought it was four minutes ... and now the counsel have found that it is eighteen and a half minutes, and I practically blew my stack," Nixon told the grand jury.

At another point, he said he wished they could recover the tape, to which one of the prosecutors, Richard Davis replied, "I think we all do." There have been recent efforts to recover the audiotape with modern technology but those have failed.

Nixon was a tragic figure, in that his fatal flaw defeated his actual strengths. His grasp of foreign policy was unparalleled but that same vigilance caused him to become obsessed with political enemies at home. That was his downfall.

Tell me about it. Compared to Clintoon Nixon was an amateur. Watergate - one gate. Clintoon: Rapegate, Chinagate, Monicagate, Arlingtongate, Whitewatergate, travelgate, Paulagate, forget it...I’ll be here for the next three weeks writing all the gates of the Clintoon.

In that gap I can imagine that he sought the help of God almighty against Americas enemies.
They were anad are so numerous, so strong, so powerful, so in league with satan.
I never really cared for Nixon, though he honored me with a handshake.
But Nixon was what he was and he was martyred for it.

I’m not a great fan of Nixon’s, although for different reasons than the MSM. For instance, he was the guy who established the EPA.

But Watergate was a very minor infraction, which was set off in the first place by some crooked shennanigans by the Democrats. Numerous Presidents—Democrats especially, have done many worse things.

Watergate was all about headlines. Headlines across the top of the front page of the Washington Compost and the NY Times, day after day after day. What had Nixon done to deserve this kind of unprecedented coverage? Little or nothing. What they really resented is that he had gone after some of their Communist pals earlier.

If Nixon had faults, and he certainly had some, it was his willingness to lean to the left from time to time.

Correct. Nixon was driven from office for having exposed a few of the traitors liberals put into government and tolerated. Watergate was nothing. His truly toxic legacy was the EPA, the Philadelphia Plan (affirmative action), a declinist foreign policy, Burger, Blackmun, etc.

15
posted on 11/12/2011 5:58:47 PM PST
by achilles2000
("I'll agree to save the whales as long as we can deport the liberals")

"Well, senator, when I was transcribing the tape, the phone rang. Then my left hand went here, my right foot went here, and my left foot way over there. That's when I may have hit the wrong button on the tape recorder."

"What, Mr Senator? Oh... Well this may not be widely known, but I do come from a circus family."

18
posted on 11/12/2011 6:15:18 PM PST
by Erasmus
(I love "The Raven," but then what do I know? I'm just a poetaster.)

Nixon is a mixed bag. Great on foreign policy, anti-Communist to his core. But his biggest flaw was that he thought he would be "liked" by liberals for giving them EVERYTHING they wanted domestically. EPA, quotas, affirmative action, price controls, taking us off the gold standard, the floating dollar, etc. He (Like GW Bush) thought it would win him "love" by going left on certain issues. Instead, it enraged his base. And eventually he had almost NO supporters of either party. Compare with Reagan. He didn't give a hoot about being liked by people who would never support him anyway. He just did what he thought was best for America. And he was right.

BTW, the taping system Nixon used that was so "horrible" was installed by...LBJ. And rumor has it that JFK used a similar system. Nixon knew he was a historical figure and wanted to get the transcript "correct". Stupidly it ended up costing him the Presidency. Imagine if Clinton used a similar taping system. History would NOT be kind. And Clinton knew it.

19
posted on 11/12/2011 6:26:10 PM PST
by boop
("Let's just say they'll be satisfied with LESS"... Ming the Merciless)

That's what grinds my gears. Nixon had NO idea about the break-in. He idiotically tried to protect the perps, instead of cutting them loose. The cover-up is always worse than the crime. If Clinton were a Republican, he would have been out on his ass at the mere mention of "suborning perjury". Nixon was a piker compared with the garden variety democrat politician. To this day I get pissed when I hear that Clinton was impeached for "lying about sex". If you look at the articles of impeachment, not ONE says that. It's all about lying to a grand jury, and wanting OTHER people to go to jail for perjury to protect his sex life.

Having sex in the Oval Office, fine. Just don't expect others to go to prison to protect your God-given "right" to have an intern lick your anus. Ref: Starr Report.

22
posted on 11/12/2011 6:45:57 PM PST
by boop
("Let's just say they'll be satisfied with LESS"... Ming the Merciless)

Nixon had NO idea about the break-in. He idiotically tried to protect the perps, instead of cutting them loose.

I am not a close student of Watergate but have some acquaintences who have gone the extra mile, including two who actually sat down and read the transcripts of all the tapes. Neither is a professional historian (fairly accomplished amateur historians, however) or a politico with an axe to grind. Both had the impression, which is shared by a number of the published authors on Watergate, that Nixon simply didn't know what had happened. Unless a smoking gun emerges, I will continue to entertain that hypothesis. It's really Occam's Razor: Nixon's mishandling of the whole mess is most simply explained by ignorance. Had he known what was up, he probably could have found a way to cut his losses and contain the damage early.

That leads right back to the big unanswered question: who ordered the break-in, and what was the real target?

Nixon was the worst Republican President this country has had. He got caught being very immoral. I don’t think Ford should have pardoned him. He deserved to be in jail. I can care less about Democrats. The Democrats can deal with their own and we should deal with our own. We deserve better than a crooked Republican President.

He got caught being very immoral. I dont think Ford should have pardoned him. He deserved to be in jail.

Yet, the lead counsel for the Nixon impeachment proceedings, Jerome Zeifman, allowed as how Nixon himself committed no discernible crime and wouldn't have been prosecuted even if Ford had not pardoned him.

Well, sphinx, I think it goes back to loyalty. I agree, there’s nothing that’s ever come out in 41 years that suggests that Nixon knew of, or approved the burglary. His idiot underlings wanted to destroy the democratic nominee by hook or by crook. How ironic, since Nixon crushed McGovern so handily. He had absolutely NO reason to fear McGovern, but people like G.Gordon Liddy thought that the best way to get rid of ones enemies is by cutting off their heads. Read the book “Will”. Liddy’s philosophy is that when America is threatened, you do everything possible to defend her, even by breaking the law. THAT explains the “reason”. Nixon thought he could cover up those misguided fools who were trying to “help” him. The chips fell down and Nixon took the fall. Literally falling on his sword.

33
posted on 11/12/2011 8:26:33 PM PST
by boop
("Let's just say they'll be satisfied with LESS"... Ming the Merciless)

Oh, and sphinx, there is a very tangled web that involves Howard Hughes, big Nixon supporter. The plumbers wanted to break into a safe that might contain incriminating evidence about democrats. Hughes REFUSED to allow it, because he had so many skeletons in his own closet and didn’t want them revealed.

34
posted on 11/12/2011 8:32:41 PM PST
by boop
("Let's just say they'll be satisfied with LESS"... Ming the Merciless)

His grasp of foreign policy was unparalleled but that same vigilance caused him to become obsessed with political enemies at home.

The right would be well served to become more obsessed with domestic marxists, the political enemy at home, for they are an order of magnitude more dangerous to the Republic than any country on either side of the Atlantic or Pacific.

The domestic communists must be dealt with.

This is not going to be solved at the ballot box, for the marxists have usurped the Founders Constitution and enfranchised all, turning the Republic in a doomed to fail Democracy.

"Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death." James Madison

Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. John Adams: letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.:Thomas Jefferson

I think the greatest foreign policy achievement was changing our relation with Israel during Yom Kippur war. The effect of Israel defeating her enemies who grossly out numbered Israel and heavily supplied by the Soviet Union with American equipment damaged the Soviet Unions credibility.

I always wondered if he was referring to the Bay of Pigs, as I believe the Cuban guys in the break-in were involved with Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs...or maybe Operation Mongoose, which was Bobby Kennedy's and the CIA's attempt to assassinate Castro - wouldn't that have been ironic - maybe his hunch that another government agency was responsible for the erasure wasn't so far off base after all......

The old book “Silent Coup” by Len Colodny from 1992 is VERY well documented. They surmised that Dean authorized the break-in, but was not truthful to the others in the reason. (His to-be wife was a hooker, and her name was in a little black book that the Dems had or something like that. He was trying to steal the book?)

But, the book goes into MUCH more than that, and how our military was spying on and trying to get rid of Nixon, etc.

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